Pär-Jörgen Pärson: 'Turn your management skills up to eleven'

This article was taken from the March
2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles
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Before walking out of the room in 2000, Angus Young, the
cap-wearing, short-trousered, schoolboy-styled lead guitarist with
AC/DC, told the New York
Daily News, "I get sick and tired when people say we put
out 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we've put out
12 albums that sound exactly the same."

With a career spanning almost 40 years and an enormous global
fan base ready to tear any mid-sized stadium to pieces on a concert
night, AC/DC should be mandatory study material for every pinstripe
climbing the corporate ladder.

As one of the great heavy-metal bands, and as a brand, AC/DC has
been strategically consistent over a long time-span. Four loud
chords are the core ingredients of a product infused with fire, sex
and aggression. We devoted metalheads pay top dollar for
merchandise and T-shirts to display to the public that we belong to
their creed.

So what, then, does this have to do with you?

Why settle for satisfied customers when you could have fans
going apeshit? Who wants motivated employees when you could have bandmates from hell?
Sadly, that's not taught in business school or in your average
corporate staff-management training course.

Swedish furniture retailer IKEA took flat-packs and
funny names on its inexpensive products that appeal to our
home-nesting instincts to the same level of distinction as the four
loud chords of AC/DC

Pär-Jörgen Pärson

But the greatest heavy-metal acts can teach us lots that would
never be let inside the gates of the Ivy League schools. "The Heavy
Metal Management Pentagram Model" is a brand new analytical
framework for something that is anything but analytical. I
sincerely believe that rationality is a grossly overrated way to
run companies, and that the ruling pseudoscience in management
literature is downright destructive. To be a truly successful
company, and thereby earn a metal badge to put proudly on your
corporate leather jacket, you have to:

- Be epic -- tell a great story that pulls your
customers into your world.

- Be a master -- nobody loves semi-skilled
people. Good is not enough.

- Be instinctive -- appeal to the most basic
human instincts in your offer.

- Be sensory -- involve as many senses as
possible, continuously, when interacting with your customers.

- Be forever -- stay the course over the long
haul.

The good news is that there are really great companies out there
that are "metal" and deliver exceptionally strong customer
experiences, and firms where the employees are incredibly tightly
bonded, just like the best metal acts. Swedish furniture retailer
IKEA took
flat-packs and funny names on its inexpensive products that appeal
to our home-nesting instincts to the same level of distinction as
the four loud chords of AC/DC. Italian knitwear manufacturer and
retailer Benetton has told epic, distinctive stories via billboard
adverts for decades. Spotify (disclaimer: I'm an investor) has been
relentless in ­proving to the world that the future of music is
universal access -- it is totally committed, and even turned the
record industry into raving fans because it never budged an inch on
its conviction.

There are, unfortunately, plenty of examples of how things go
astray when you're un-metal. Take Volvo, the car manufacturer that
some 30 years ago was as big as BMW. Volvo wasn't totally focused
on the idea of building great cars, but instead invested heavily in
food companies and industrial products. BMW, meanwhile, focused
entirely on building the ultimate driving machine and today
outsells Volvo by a factor of four to one. So let the success
stories of Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Ozzy Osbourne flush the lame
teachings of Tom Peters's In Search of Excellence, or
Jim Collins's Good to Great, out of your system.
"Good to Badass" is a lot more fun to aspire to. And more
rewarding, too.

Pär-Jörgen Pärson is a Stockholm-based investor at Northzone
Ventures, sits on the board of Spotify and is the co-author of
Heavy Metal Management.